Posted
by
Zonkon Friday November 24, 2006 @07:34PM
from the tube-is-all-things-to-all-people dept.

Gray writes "École Secondaire Mont-Bleu has banned all personal electronic devices and suspended two 13-year-old girls after one uploaded to YouTube a camera phone video of their teacher yelling at the other. After the video was posted on the popular internet video site, the teacher was so embarrassed that he stayed home from work, where he remains on stress leave. The teachers' union is now trying to get all personal electronic devices banned from all schools in Western Quebec." Meanwhile, via the PVRBlog comes word that YouTube has helped raise CBS' ratings by some 7-9%. From that article: "CBS has uploaded more than 300 clips that have a total of 29.2 million views on YouTube, averaging 857,000 views per day, since the service launched on October 18. CBS has three of the top 25 most viewed videos this month (Nov.1-17), including clips from CBS's Tuesday night hit drama 'NCIS,' 'Late Show with David Letterman,' 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' and 'The Early Show.' The CBS Brand Channel is also one of the most subscribed channels of all time with more than 20,000 users subscribing to CBS programming on YouTube since the channel launch last month."

One is the fact that kids were recording what was going on privately, i.e. these two teachers fighting. Sure one can argue it was done in public, but still. This is a new world, where even the average joe can feel like a famous actor, where any little flub or stupid act they do can be recoreded by 500 people with camera phones, and uploaded to millions of viewers in a few minutes. It used to be you needed to be someone important to be embarassed by millions, now you just need to be in the unfortunate position of being around a cell phone.

As for CBS, good for them. I would rather have an entire episode of a show, with commercials on youtube in a good resolution then to have to watch it on TV, or be forced to record it via dvr, etc.

It wasn't two teachers fighting, it was a teacher yelling at a 13 year old kid. The other 13 year old recorded it and put it on youtube. Depending on why exactly he was yelling, and there aren't many good reasons, he probably should be embarassed.

Actually, that is what the ban makes upsetting. It would be good to ban phones in class because the constant beeping will distort the order, I can completely understand that. But it should not be banned for the reason that stupid behaviour of the teacher could get public. Just for comparison, in Germany there is a website "rate-my-professor", and several college professors have asked via court that their entry is removed there. This is of course rather questionable, if they are underperforming, they should

And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."

Personally? As much as I'm against the Big Brother society, I'm amused that someone is so scared of how he could be portrayed by an objective viewfinder. And he'll tell us all about how the context isn't there, but there's no good reason why a teacher should be yelling and carrying on to the point where it looks good on video. There's other more effective ways to reach people, and if you can't figure one of them out then there are other career paths.

And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."

And how many times have schools contacted parents or called them to a parent teacher conference to tell of some misbehavior by their child, only to have the parents say "that's not possible, my little angel would never do that and if you try and discipline him/her for it, we'll sue"? Now, if the teacher tried to record the little monsters (even for the teacher's own protection and to have proof of the act), the parents would be completely livid. Lawsuits would be flying and we would all be screaming about "The Man" trying to oppress the students.

I too am against a Big Brother society, but I think we are already getting there. The problem is that Big Brother is not the government, but rather any knucklehead with some sort of recording device. Personally, I think those kids should be treated the same way a teacher at that school would have been for similarly recording an altercation instigated by a student toward a teacher.

I absolutely despise teachers' unions. I think that they have done more to damage the quality of education in the industrialized world than any other force. However, it is abundantly clear that this teacher needs the full backing of the union. More than anything, kids today need to learn respect for authority. This doesn't mean that authority is always right or infallible, just that kids should be taught to respect and that there are proper channels in which to handle grievances (i.e., posting to youtube is not the proper channel).

Worse than that. Poster is not just advocating the same standards, but the same penalties. I could agree with holding 13 year olds to adult standards on some things, particularly behavior they really should have outgrown by the time they were six, but what's with the idea of automatically using penalties as severe as we would impose for adults?

I too am against a Big Brother society, but I think we are already getting there. The problem is that Big Brother is not the government, but rather any knucklehead with some sort of recording device.

If that's Big Brother, I think I'm probably for it. The problem with surveillance has always been that one side, the "authority" side, has always had a recording. If that recording was favorable to authority's version of events, it could be released. If it was unfavorable, it could be buried. The imbalance invites abuse.

I would be against a system where only the student had a recording. I wouldn't be as much against it as I would be against a system where only the teacher had a recording, because the teacher is already in a position of great power, but I'd still be against it. I might very well be in favor of a system where everybody had, or at least might have, a recording of everything, all the time.

Yeah, that would mean that there'd be embarrassing footage of all of us, because we've all done stupid things we're not proud of. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal, though... it's kind of hard to come down too hard on Joe for his filmed mistakes, when he can dredge up yours. On the other hand, if somebody has a pattern of behavior, it becomes pretty hard to hide it.

Such a system might be too hard on people, too stressful to live with, too unforgiving of the human need to get away with something once in a while. I'd especially be worried about people
getting destroyed over the witch-hunt of the week.

It might also be an improvement over what we have now. The case isn't open and shut... and one could actually do reasonable research to perhaps predict the effects, rather than just having everybody yell about "privacy" like that automatically trumped everything else.

More than anything, kids today need to learn respect for authority. This doesn't mean that authority is always right or infallible, just that kids should be taught to respect and that there are proper channels in which to handle grievances (i.e., posting to youtube is not the proper channel).

Why? What's so special about authority that it deserves this mystical respect you're calling for? Obviously, people in authority are often right about a lot of things (as well as often being wrong). That doesn't mean they should get an iota more consideration than everybody else. Arguably they should get less slack, since they're in a position to abuse their authority.

Wake up, buddy. These are public employees. These are the people to who we have committed one of the most fundamental and important roles in our society: teaching the next generation. In many cases these teachers are more important in shaping the future of our society than are parents themselves.

You better believe we need to hold these people to the highest level of accountability.

And you know what? Teachers unions should be happy we are doing this. As we weed out the scum and the freeloaders who are negatively impacting our children, we will raise the standards in the teaching profession and hopefully thereby raise the wages of teachers to reflect the fundamental and critical role they play in our society and our future.

And you know what? Teachers unions should be happy we are doing this. As we weed out the scum and the freeloaders who are negatively impacting our children, we will raise the standards in the teaching profession and hopefully thereby raise the wages of teachers to reflect the fundamental and critical role they play in our society and our future.

Except that all unions are administrated by the "scum and freeloaders" group. That's what unions are all about, defending the right of not working properly.

I loved it when airliners banned smoking. Now there's NO SMOKING everywhere.

You say that like it's a bad thing. I'm pretty firm on the side of pro-Liberty... except when it comes to smokers. Hell, the government can oppress them as much as it wants. Put 'em in stocks for public ridicule, that's A-OK with me.:)

How much annoying little niggling crap do teachers have to take from students as well? If you've got the situation where kids are provoking teachers into having arguments and then putting it on the web, lets have it both ways then - put cameras all around the schools and you solve so much potential issues in terms of classroom disruption.

I disagree with that (at least in current day Britain) [bbc.co.uk]. But given you've made that point - having cameras everywhere would mean that you would have the truth caught on camera. And most disruptive behaviour and classroom violence that goes on is actually student-student.

Personally I'm with either completely banning the devices or evening the playing field if students are starting to manafacture situations to ruin the careers of the teachers (which is what this article is all about). It would also show pare

Um, you can always ask other teachers/students in the given situation what was going on. Heck, someone can always press charges and the justice system would take care of it. It would probably set a precedent either way discouraging the use of these phones.

The context is irrelevant.If the teacher feels that it is shameful to be yelling like this then the teacher should not have done it. This teacher - many teachers - seem to think that their students are some kind of sub-people, to and in front of whom otherwise shameful behavior has no consequences. This is a public employee in a public building operating in a public employee's capacity. This behavior is unacceptable. This attitude is unacceptable. It is as unacceptable as it is in another context for a poli

Well, if it is a trap then is is a big black bear trap in plain site. The camera may have been hidden but if a student is trying to goad you on then shouldn't it be obvious to a teacher what the appropriate action is? Getting into an hysterical screaming match with someone who is provoking you is something children do, or drunken pub crawlers, or white trash guests on Jerry Springer. Mature adults in positions of authority do not act this way and shouldn't have to

I really don't think teachers should be yelling at students, baited or not.

Like the Rodney King video, while you can leave out preceeding video, I really don't think that video captured from a cell phone is easy to edit such that segments can be removed from the middle and not be noticible. For handheld video capture, the phone shakes so much that it's hard to sync that up well with human movement and not have the segments be noticible.

Is a teacher a baby-sitter, or a prison guard?I wonder why a teacher feels he needs to get all worked up about maintaining discipline in a class. Are they not allowed to dis-invite a student from the class? It seems to me that the problem quickly goes away if a teacher sets high standards of behaviour and then follows through by expelling anyone who falls short.

If a student is creating a disturbance, he likely is not going to learn anything from the lesson plan. Why should one student be allowed to sabotage

Yes, Yes, and no, they are not allowed to disinvite a student from class. Welcome to the modern American public school system: if you expel a student, expect a lawsuit. Since the cost of going to court is going to ruin your already ridiculously underfunded budget, as a school administrator you will not do ANYTHING that might put you in danger of that. And since most parents are completely unable to raise civil children, very little learning takes place in school.
Putting little Johnny's "self-esteem" a

You left out the beginning of that sentence. Let me fix it for you: According to the Portages-de-l'Outaouais school board, the incident took place a month ago, when one student provoked the teacher into yelling at her while a classmate secretly taped the confrontation.

Now, remember, this is a statement from the same school board that's banning all electronic devices simply because they can be used to provide a factual record of teachers' actions. (Whether the video was taken out of context or not, that's s

I think that we are FINALLY starting to see all kinds of content, including television content online in some kind of substantial quantity.

I was checking out Comedy Central's clips of the Daily Show like I usually do every few weeks or so, and I was shocked to find that you can stream tons and tons of good content from the Daily Show at a time. I used to have to click and watch an ad for every 1 minute segment, which was almost more trouble than it was worth. Last night, I clicked "play all", and I got several hours worth of Daily Show content, with ads interspersed through out (like TV).

I think it's interesting that TV exceutives are FINALLY starting to notice online viewship. It seems to me that they would've done it much earlier, because tracking advertising online is about one beeellion times more effective than those useless Neilson boxes that give very limited information on a tiny same of the population.

Interesting choice. Because The Daily Show is a huge, huge piece of media getting extra play online. And the Comedy Central legal goons have screwed the pooch by getting nasty.If they were smart, they'd fucking offer a clip service, with explicit authority to rebroadcast on youtube, your website, whatever. And their only terms would be you had to leave that 15 second ad at the beginning of a 3 minute piece. 15 seconds is short enough not to piss people off.

And until Adobe stops dragging their feet on Linux (and even BSD) support, fuck Flash, too. Let's face it, the browser plugin situation is a disaster

Using Linux is your choice. YOURS. You have made the choice to use an OS that has roughly 3% market share. Not only that, but an OS where interoperability between distros is far from assured. Oddly enough, the fact that Adobe supports 95% of the market sounds like more than enough for me. The browser plug-in situation is great! Flash is compatible on more types of computers than 99% of the programs out there. Flash is more cross-browser and cross-platform compatible than many HTML/CSS websites. If you have chosen to use an OS that is not supported by a piece of software that has become a major part of the web, that is your choice. The rest of the world is under no obligation to support a platform just because you happen to use it.

Ah, what you say is correct, if the networks would benefit from more accurate tracking. From what I understand of the cable business, its at least just as likely that media companies get paid more for their commercial spaces than they are worth, as it is that they get paid less.I think media companies were faced with significant costs at high risks with the potential to eventually make less money, because advertisers finally realize that people don't watch adds.

"CBS has uploaded more than 300 clips that have a total of 29.2 million views on YouTube, averaging 857,000 views per day, since the service launched on October 18. CBS has three of the top 25 most viewed videos this month (Nov.1-17), including clips from CBS's Tuesday night hit drama 'NCIS,' 'Late Show with David Letterman,' 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' and 'The Early Show.' The CBS Brand Channel is also one of the most subscribed channels of all time with more than 20,000 users subscribing to CBS programming on YouTube since the channel launch last month."

Finally! Hopefully, big media will realise that literally giving away content is good for them in the long run. If this catches on like we've been hoping for years now, the DMCA, copyright laws and its like won't need to be changed, they'll just become irrelevant withg the advent of the new paradigm. (sorry for the buzzwords, folks.)

The message isn't as strong as you think. There are definite... irregularities... to the comments posted to CBS content.

CBS clips have an unusually high comment:views ratio and they usually read like text from spin control or a marketing campaign.

Don't get me wrong, though, I've watched more CBS content on YouTube than I'm likely to ever watch on the TeeVee... I'd like to see someone "get it" and legitimately succeed by pursuing the Free and Open path.

The CBS Innertube has been a good thing for me. I don't often watch TV, but the CIS stuff is fairly good and I hate to miss it. And Innertube works! Fox.com has a similar service, and ABC sucks. ABC requires your firewall to be dormant, you adblocker to be off, and now you have to allow images from sites other than the original, plus they have installed tracking software with the viewer download. On top of all that, their streaming is spotty and the some programs 'way out of date.

There really are great kids who have been handed poorly-equipped parents by a crueler fate than your own.

Finding the heart to absorb some of their personal angst whilst moving the class forward in spite of the aggressively self-promotional behaviour is THE key challenge of teaching a PUBLIC school - the principle purpose of which is to address the vicious cycles in society by which the feeble beget the more feeble.

Its a lofty calling, and both difficult and under-appreciated (to say nothing of misunderstood).

Is it so hard to act like the adult you should be if you were to be in the profession of teaching? One cannot justify something like this with "Well my work is so stressful" as if that's a free ticket to do your job poorly. These kids got what they wanted, if it was really a baiting situation (which, frankly, doesn't matter at all), and the teacher did nothing but embolden them to do it again in the future. I've dealt with enough asshat teachers though over the years to understand that it's not too far fetc

"Kids who deliberately provoke a teacher to film the results don't need to be yelled at so much as slapped around a little. And that's why I'd be a terrible teacher."This is a SHAMEFUL attitude.

There is nothing more important we as a society can do for our future workers, artists, thinkers and leaders than to ensure that they are taught by the absolute best people - best teachers - we can find. Teaching should be seen as one of the highest callings in our society.

It's ridiculously easy for teachers to abuse their authority. Many often display questionable behaviour in the classroom or elsewhere, the account of which might be met with skepticism when reported to a higher authority, or might simply be flat-out not reported owing to the submissive nature of most students or due to the awkwardness inherent in getting a teacher chastised for an isolated incident.

With the knowledge that lectures are being, or might possible be, recorded by the students themselves, teach

Here, let's modify that a bit, and see how this whole "education" thing works both ways.It's ridiculously easy for students to abuse their ubiquity. Many often display questionable behaviour in the classroom or elsewhere, the account of which might be met with skepticism when reported to a higher authority, or might simply be flat-out not reported owing to the agressive nature of some students or due to the awkwardness inherent in getting a student chastised for an isolated incident, or the possibility of a

Not the AC, but I'll answer that. The biggest correction would have been to actually make some effort at making sense. All you did was change many word to their antonyms with no regard for how they would actually read, giving us nonsense such as:

Allowing such videos on youtube, and electronic devices as whole from schools, is a broad handed tyrannical gesture and an affront to teacher's rights and free speech.

Not only does this not make grammatical sense in several spots, it's not even a sensible argument

"I think kids should be allowed to have electronic devices because the threat of being recorded will keep bad teachers in check"Absolutely!

And if that means teachers who can't handle the stress or the scandal are weeded out... win for us!

Once we start to effectively filter out the abusive, dysfunctional, mediocre teachers, we can start to see the salaries of good teachers increase and the prominence of the position in society increase.

Apparently filming kids secretly in a classroom is "underhanded" but not illegal; teachers seem to be unhappy about film material demonstrating that they lost control completely. I can't find anything that says whether open filming would be legal or illegal.

So schools, can place CCTVs around to monitor students, submit students to search, and general pry into the lives of students.But when students monitor the administration that cannot be allowed to happen?

Being originally from Indiana and the formerly well known Coach Bobby Knight, his unadultered commentary shows up as well. I looked his name up on YouTube. One of them is a half-time tirade in the locker room.

Here is the link [youtube.com]. Hilarious to listen to but BE FORWARNED, his speech will make a sailor blush. If Coach Knight found about this audio being posted, the team will catch hell even if this was recorded a few years ago !

A friend of mine who is a teacher said to me a few weeks ago that this was common at the secondary school he teaches at now. Infact, some kids are trying to make their teacher lose their temper on purpose just so they can record it and put it on youtube later. Doing this of course makes the kids who did it a hero among their peers, and the teacher very embarassed.

plus another/. story recently on smuggling in cell phones in their underwear

schools are becoming a battleground over communication. those who have the powerful minds yoked are losing control of the system that keeps the humans docile and working for other's benefit, and they do not like it. ("stay in school, you get a good job!"... crap) People younger and younger are realizing that the way out is through self sufficiency and most of the formal education

Would be to have video cameras installed in EVERY classroom, so that if some smart-alec tries to set up his teacher this way again, the full story can still be seen... including how the teacher was goaded into responding the way that he did. Not that I excuse what he did, but having another video to substantiate what led up to the occurence would have made it a lot easier for him to just apologize for overreacting and move on without continuing to be embarrassed. With such facilities, a student who is tr

I'm not sure what it is, but from my personal experiences with teachers from Quebec, as well as anecdotal evidence from others (my girfriend was raised in Montreal and I know a couple of other Quebecois with similar experiences as well) I now have quite a dim view of the teaching "profession" there. This is especially true with regard to teachers in anglophone schools in Quebec. They are VERY strongly unionised and VERY protective of their own self interests and, quite frankly, a few of them are mentally unstable. I KNOW this is a blanket statement and I hope that any/. readers who are teachers from Quebec do not take offense becasue there are at least a few good teachers there I'm sure.

In any case, I think that there is some sort of systemic problem with public education in Quebec concerning monitoring competency of teachers and providing accountability. Perhaps it has to do with the union having too much control (unions have a purpose but when they are corrupt or the bargaining posisions are not on level ground it can be harmful). It seems very close to impossible to fire a teacher in Quebec--one would have to be convicted of physically or sexually abusing a student to be fired, or some other similar grave justification. That culture is why some people of questionable capability, mental capacity or emotional stability can remain teachers for as long as they want.

From what I understand, teachers with short fuses have been occasionally blowing up on students in Quebec classrooms for decades. We aren't talking about stern corporal punishment in the style delivered by the nuns of the old Catholic schoolhouses here either--we are talking they go all "Kosmo Kramer" on a student. In my girfriends primary school this was the sort of discipline meted out by these real pieces of work:

* Forgetting to bring something for show and tell in Grade I would mean you were ordered to go home and get it...unescorted..even if you lived a couple kilometres away or had to cross major throughfares. The parents wouldn't be notified of this.

* One teacher would throw objects at her students' heads if they were talking when she didn't want them to (chalk, etc). When my girfriend caught flying chalk coming toward her head one day and threw it back she was sent home and told not to come back the next day.

* Locking children in broom closets was a choice method of discipline. Parents were not notified of behavioural problems that justified such a punishment, nor were they asked if it was appropriate to discipline their child that way.

* Yelling and screaming tantrums--by the teachers--was common in some classes.

What happened to detention or going to the principals' office? What happened with informing and involving parents with such issues? Apparently, at least as early as the late 1970s, such practices have fallen out of style in a few schools in Quebec. And guess how complaints from parents are dealt with:

* Denial - your kid is lying or exaggerating* Defence of the actions by teachers, however inappropriate the parents might think they are* Promises to stop using such methods on your child--mixed in with threats of legal action should you complain publically about a teacher.

Yes, it is true I've met a couple of great teachers who (at least at one time) taught in Quebec. Former STUDENTS that I know, pretty much without exception, had multiple teachers that were incompetent and/or nutjobs at some point. I was not educated in Quebec myself, and I had my fair share of stupid teachers, but I cannot remember there being as many nutjobs as I've heard about in Quebec. Can't say whay that is aside from something systemically wrong with teacher training/hiring/screening becasue as a whole the Quebecois are among the most wonderful people I've met (thankfully they didn't learn how to behave from their teachers).

* Forgetting to bring something for show and tell in Grade I would mean you were ordered to go home and get it...unescorted..even if you lived a couple kilometres away or had to cross major throughfares. The parents wouldn't be notified of this.

* One teacher would throw objects at her students' heads if they were talking when she didn't want them to (chalk, etc). When my girfriend caught flying chalk coming toward her head one day and threw it back she was sent home and told not to come back the next day.

My suggestion: Install video cameras in all classrooms. The teachers can film everything, edit to their hearts content, and publish the best bits on YouTube. Must be great fun seeing thousands of creepy little morons being shown to be creepy little morons for everyone to see. Like the bloody idiot who wrote the headline for this submission and couldn't even get the spelling of "relevant" right.

While I expect I would generally find you horribly repugnant, I agree with you here. I don't think surveillance is avoidable. I think David Brin is right. This means that it should be possible to watch everybody.

I don't think banning camera phones is the answer because then you'll have schools doing exactly what you said. Now if all parties have video equipment, that's a much fairer situation.

I'm kind of wondering how long it will be before video content is digitally signed or watermarked by the devic

I don't know, there seems to be a moral difference between mocking children who have no choice but to be where they are, and mocking adults who chose the profession they are in. Teachers are held to a much higher standard of conduct than students, and for good reason.

Pranks like this get caught and lead to kids being punished, but whenever a teacher loses control, that damages their credibility and that of the school's. In this case, both the teacher and students need to be suspended; and they all need counseling. The kids need to be taught not to play pranks and the teacher needs to learn how to maintain control.

We need those student cameras in place in case teachers start shit with the students (i.e., beatings, molestation, etc).

Banning student cameras in this case is like banning cars because someone went on a rampage across a playground.

Very rarely is the teacher at fault, I can easily say based on reports I see via NEA and NJEA newsletters nearly half the time the teacher is punished despite 9/10 times the student provoking the teacher. Getting kicked, spit on, punched, cut, fingers broken, death threats, sex threats, etc. is the norm for teachers these days.

In 30 years of teacher only in the last 10 have either of my parents been physically injured by students, my mother her finger broken by a kid who was beating the shit out of another in the hall (she pulled the kid away and he jammed her fingers into the door and slammed it. My father in a "good" district got a black eye by a kid who swung a 2x4 at another kid and he stepped into it to block it. If either of them had swung back, they would have been fired, yet the kids got a weeks suspension and thats it. Both my parents are considered "good" teachers reading what their students have said about them on rate my teacher, infact apparently my dads kids love him, so they are in no way "mean"

The fact is kids arnt punished enough in schools these days. All treating kids with respect has done is let them walk all over people because their parents dont know the first thing about punishing a kid for bad behavior, so they learn that there is no such thing AS punishment until its too late. I myself had to be escorted to a school for a into to education course once because the violence around the school was so bad. Not by adults mind you, but by the KIDS.

I wholeheartedly agree students should be videotaped all day. That way every time one tries to sue a teacher they can be shown to be the punks and fuckups they are. I also feel that anytime a student does something outragiously wrong like strikes a teacher, not only should they be expelled, but the teacher shoudl be allowed to sue their parents for being a fuckup as well.

But the punishments should be immediate and painful or unpleasant - i.e. cleaning dirty stuff or having to "assume the position" or even being banned from sports and extracurriculars. Not calling the cops and having them deal with it (that just shows teachers as weak) or forcing kids to attend a whine-session with a shrink.

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more (although I think my wording might be different).If I might add, I believe Darwinism has been lost on the human race. Since health care has eliminated physical issues as a variable, I think a new variable should be promoted: motivation. People who are disruptive, angry should be dealt with by lowering their quality of education and they will inevitably be reduced to the crap jobs of society. Those who are bright and motivated should benefit from the best of education giv

The problem with your proposal is that evolution tends to favor individuals who reproduce. And the "stupid" tend to reproduce far more frequently and promiscuously than the "smart." If you're going to propose eugenics as a viable method of improving the human race, at the minimum, your plan must provide either a mechanism for the "undesirables" to be removed from the reproductive population or unevenly increase the number of breeding opportunities for the "desirables."

I'd like to see evidence that "Very rarely is the teacher at fault, I can easily say based on reports I see via NEA and NJEA newsletters nearly half the time the teacher is punished despite 9/10 times the student provoking the teacher."I'll agree that death threats and violence by students upon teachers are on the rise compared to 50 years ago. But that's a direct reverse from 50 years ago when violence by teachers AND parents upon students were the accepted norm. The only difference between yester year and

I fully realize that a LOT of good teachers undergo punishment every week by rowdy students. BUT, I venture to say that those NEA/NJEA newsletters citing teachers as punished "half the time" are probably seeing something that's almost fair.Even if 9/10 times, the "student is provoking the teacher" - so what? The teacher is expected to maintain a higher standard. The school classroom isn't a democracy, after all. Students don't really have much in the way of "individual rights" in school. If anything, t

Its kinda funny - in 3rd world countries, kids know how to behave in classrooms by the time they hit highschool. Teachers are given both the power and the respect as parents over the kids. Some teachers are a bit violent, and some find better ways of getting accross - but kids learn how to deal with the whole variety of them.

In Canada / America (I haven't been to a British school) - by the time kids hit highschool, they 'rebel' against society. Clearly there's something wrong when highschool kids don't know where they oughta behave themselves and where they can vent and rebel.

After reviewing the evidence (as linked above) I have the following conclusions:- after all these years, some teachers are still loud and annoying- after all these years, some students are still assholes and bitches, especially to subs- teachers' threats are empty- students know that the teachers' threats are empty

Keep in mind, what I'm suggesting is much more calm. No more punishing up front. Punishing for long term, sure. I'm also suggesting that there are good students out there. And a lot of them.

A teacher can shout at a pupil without losing control - it can be a very effective method of illustrating that what the student did was wrong, although clearly it should only be one weapon in their arsenal. Without seeing the video (is it still online? I couldn't find it) it's impossible to know whether the teacher lost control or was simply raising his voice. The article, though, is very clear that the students orchestrated the whole thing to damage the teac

Like a child provoking a soldier to shoot them by throwing rocks in the middle east?

Just because someone provokes you doesn't absolve you of your actions afterwards.

If I met you in a bar and called your mother funny names and you punched me in the face, and the entire thing was filmed (from the words about your mother to the fist in my face) you would still be arrested and I would still win a civil suit because you responded poorly to provocation.*

Of course I read TFA... nothing in TFA changes one thing about what I said. A professional teacher should not have been reduced to yelling at a student. Intentional provocation or no, these students exposed a teacher who is clearly not qualified to be in that position.

No one would remember Rodney King if someone had not caught the police beating him on video

Which shows how tricky a video can be. What you saw on TV was just snippets. The full one is what the jury saw -- and that made them acquit the policemen.

RODNEY KING FACTS: [capmag.com] he was high on drugs, possibly PCP, speeding down the road; the police had to chase him; he resisted arrest, and tried to punch a policeman; he was so high that even a taser didn't bring him down, so the policemen had no choice but use their club

When I was doing my masters school policy was that mobiles were not allowed. With most of the students being graduates that were already working and had responsibilities, it was quite possible that some of them would receive a call. So at the beginning of each course, and for the first two or three classes, this teacher would warn us something like this:

Use of cell phones is not allowed. It's in the school rules, and it's my rule. You have agreed to take this class under those conditions. If a cell rings in my class, the owner will loose 20% of his score in next exam. Second time offenders will fail the course. If you are not willing to commit yourself to study and give this degree its required attention, you don't deserve to be here occupying a place that many others are waiting in line to take.

It was a bit pompous but effective. He also said that if his own phone should ring, then he would give everybody in the class 5% score for free on next e